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Biography

Erlend Øye was born on 21 November, 1975, in Bergen.

He grew up listening to Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Suzanne Vega and The Smiths. During high school in the mid-’90s, he and some friends formed the band Skog (“forest” in Norwegian), taking inspiration from A Forest by The Cure. In 1996, he joined the band Peachfuzz as electric guitarist, playing several times in London between 1996 and 1998. In 1998, he moved to London, and then in 1999 to Manchester.

When he was back home in Bergen for vacations he jammed with Eirik Glambek Bøe, his former high-school and Skog mate. The duo formed Kings of Convenience in 1998 and released the debut record, Quiet is the New Loud, in 2001. In the same period, he collaborated with the electronic Norwegian duo Röyksopp, lending his voice for the song Poor Leno and Remind Me on the record Melody A.M… As a result, he became interested in electronic music. He spent the next years either in Berlin or traveling around the world. He recorded his solo album Unrest in ten different cities with ten different electronic artists. He the toured as a DJ, and released a remix record for the DJ Kicks series in 2004.

In the same year, Kings of Convenience released the second record Riot on an Empty Street. He also founded another project in Berlin, The Whitest Boy Alive. The band originally started as an electronic band, but slowly developed into a band with no programmed elements. Debut record Dreams was released in 2006, while Rules was released in 2009. In 2006, he appeared in the Italian movie Shooting Silvio acting as a DJ during in a house party.